


Certain

by headphonecables



Series: If Dreams Can Come True (What Does That Say About Nightmares?) [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, The End Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headphonecables/pseuds/headphonecables
Summary: No matter how long you've served them, no matter how devoted you are. In your dreams, they will make you suffer. And so he dreams of travelling to his very own end. // set before ep. 120
Series: If Dreams Can Come True (What Does That Say About Nightmares?) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013415
Kudos: 5





	Certain

He doesn't always dream of the city now. Now that he sees them when he is awake, now that he is aware of their presence all the time.

He dreams he travels along them. There is no one else there, there is no background, there is only a glass floor and a dark vine below it.  
He travels on it. When he turns left or right it turns with him and after a while he cannot tell if he has turned at all. He can't stop. And he knows he can't escape the fate that waits for him at the end of the vine.  
No one can. In the end, everyone dies.

He knows as well as anyone that his death will not be a pleasant one. Years ago, sleeping on his friend's couch, spending his days looking for a job and not eating unless food was basically forced onto him, he would have welcomed it. He did not have anything to live for back then and while he had never actually considered committing suicide, he wouldn't have minded as much.  
Or, at least he thinks so now. It's not like he has much to live for in the present either. He does nothing with his life except bear witness to the end of others.

His own life, his own death lies beneath the glass floor. He travels along it. For how long? He doesn't know. Death is certain but the hour isn't.  
He doesn't want to die, but he knows it's his only option. Inevitable. A promise. Death is certain.

The hour isn't. He cannot stop it, but can he prolong it? There is no way to turn back, no matter which way he faces he walks forward, walks further down the dark line beneath the floor. With all his willpower, all his strength, he stops walking.  
At first, nothing changes. He is shaking with effort. His mind screams at him to continue, to move his legs, they almost move themselves but he somehow manages to stand still.  
The glass floor is the same. The black root below it does not change. He forces himself to sit down and his legs give up, he ends up on all fours, panting heavily. He can see the pulsating vine beneath his fingers, bigger than both his hands under the thin floor. His laboured breath fogs up the glass. He knows he can't do this for long. Many have tried to stay, to remain stagnant or ever-changing, anything to avoid travelling to their destination. A few hundred years, at most. And there are prices to pay for it.

With a sound that is not a sound as much as a feeling, somewhere deep within him, horrible and sharp, the glass cracks. He watches as thin lines move around his hands and desperately tries to stand up, to run, but the root has ended and he doesn't even make it to his feet before the vines begin to wrap around him.  
His hands are first and he is bound, helpless against the inevitable. He has touched them before, over time it has become unavoidable.  
His own death feels achingly familiar. It feels like his life, it feels like every moment spent wandering streets, sitting in cafés. It feels like the cool London air on an early december morning.

He does not know what will happen to him in the future, in the uncertain hours of his life. But as the tendrils wrap around his arms, as they flow into each other like ink until there is no skin left, he knows it promises him an end. It won't be peaceful, but that is alright. His life was not peaceful either.  
And it is the same, he is the same, in life and in death and he watches his own roots wrap around his body as he goes limp.  
He will be scared when he wakes up. Everyone fears death while they are alive. But here, within his own promised demise, he can't help but think that life and death really are the same. That the end of a life is no more significant than a drop of water down a drain. That the moment he dies is just another moment in his life, that it doesn't mean anything.  
That no death means anything.  
That the hour of someone's end is the same as an hour spent doing nothing on a lazy Saturday. That it won't be important.  
That nothing he does, nothing he witnesses holds any significance. And that perhaps scares him more than feeling his own heartbeat fade out, painfully slowly, and his mind getting heavy with the loss of blood flow.

**Author's Note:**

> mors certa hora incerta :)


End file.
